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Loading... The Breakdown Laneby Jacquelyn Mitchard
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book.  GeniusJen | Oct 13, 2009 |  I initially found this book difficult to get into. The alternating chapters written by the Mother with MS and her son were somewhat confusing, but clarified along the way. Gabe...the son has learning disabilities, but there is no clue to that in his journal which I found slightly off putting. The book did illustrate the impact that a disabling, degenerative illness has on the family structure and the old saying "when illness comes through the door, love flies out of the window" certainly applies here. I found the husband Leo's character very irritating and I am unsure if that was definitely what the author intended. I loved Jacquelin Mitchard's "The Deep End of the Ocean" and "Cage of Stars", but was slightly disappointed in this novel. (  ) teresa1953 | May 19, 2009 | husband disappears to 'find himself'. Wife gets really sick and the kids look for him and find him with a totally diff. family. Wife writes advice column which son and friend write while she's too sick to. m.s. is her sickness. Very good book. (  ) hammockqueen | May 7, 2009 | The Breakdown Lane is a story of a woman who has it all. The husband, the job, three children, a house and it all comes unglued. The husband turns out to be a weak-kneed ba**ard who "needs time to find himself" basically. But he is really trying to find a way out of his responsibilities without looking like the worm he is. The wife finds herself with a very serious illness and being unable to reach the husband two of the children secretly set out to find him and find him they do; (***spoiler alert***) with another family. Anyway the wife and children bravely learn to carry on, the mother having help with great friends. The father attempts to help in his own way. In the end all survive to carry on and live their lives and so shall we. The first two thirds of the book had me but throughout the last parts I was pretty much yawning my way to the finish line. I thought most of the characters could have been drawn much stronger and the only ones I came to care about were the children and the friend. Soooooooo, what's next on the list? Hmmmmmmmmmm? (  )1  nannybebette | Apr 12, 2009 | I haven't read any Jacquelyn Mitchard books for quite a while, and now I'm not sure why. I don't like to do blow by blow reviews, but I enjoyed this book a lot. It basically involves a woman who writes an advice column part time. Her husband goes through a midlife crisis in which he decides he wants to get back to nature and live a communal life...a far cry from his life as a University lawyer. He eventually quits his job and takes a "sabbatical" from his family, which includes 2 teenagers and a 2 year old. He does this even though his wife obviously has a sporadic mysterious illness...which is finally diagnosed as multiple sclerosis after he leaves. He becomes completely incommunicado, but is eventally tracked down at a commune in NY State where he is living under another name with a young woman and their young child with another one on the way. The thing I like best about Mitchard is the way she writes character. She writes as two different characters in this book...of different generations, and pulls both of them off really well. I can see, hear and feel her characters, and they seem very "real" to me. I enjoy the way she writes about relationships as well, between family and between friends. She wraps things up in an almost fairy-tale way that was a bit of a stretch for me, but I still really enjoyed the book and would recommend it to friends. I have another of her books already downloaded to my eReader, and can't wait to read that one. ( ) PermaSwooned | Apr 4, 2009 |  no reviews | add a review
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| Book description |
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Where can a woman turn when her own life threatens to overwhelm her ability to keep her children safe? New York Times bestselling author Jacquelyn Mitchard takes the readers of her newest novel on a wry and moving journey of loss and healing.
Giving advice is what Julieanne does for a living -- every Sunday she doles it out to clueless people she doesn't know, in a column in her local Wisconsin paper. But when it comes to her personal life, Julie herself seems to have missed some clues. Having worked creatively to keep her twenty-year marriage to Leo fresh and exciting, she is completely caught off guard when he tells her he needs to go on a ""sabbatical"" from their life together, leaving Julie and their three children -- Gabe, Caroline, and Aury -- behind. But it soon becomes clear that his leave of absence is meant to be permanent. The succeeding months are filled with a confusion and sadness that shake the core of the entire family. Things take a turn for the worse when Julie is diagnosed with a serious illness and the children undertake a dangerous journey to find Leo -- before it's too late. As the known world sinks precariously from view, the clan must navigate its way through the shoals of love, guilt, and betrayal. Together, with the help of Leo's parents and Julie's best friend, Cathy, they work their way back to solid ground and a new definition of family.
No one illuminates modern love, marriage, and parenting better than Jacquelyn Mitchard. Written with her trademark poignancy, humor, and insight, The Breakdown Lane is her most moving, eloquent, and life-affirming work yet.
"(retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:57:54 -0400)
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Wikipedia in English
The book centers around a woman who not only loses her husband to a wacky desire to live a simpler and more-fulfilling life, but has to single-handedly raise two teenagers and a young daughter by herself, all while dealing with her diagnosis of MS.
THE BREAKDOWN LANE is women's fiction at its best. I actually enjoyed the two first-person accounts that make up the book (it's in the form of a journal belonging to the mother and one written by the son). Although it does end up with a rather happily-ever-after ending, this book details life in all its ups and downs--and you'll appreciate being along for the ride. (